TRIB TALK

Saturday

“I agree with the writer this evening who called Trib Talk ‘Trash Talk.’ I think you should rename it Trash Talk.”

“I saw John Boehner was talking about how he wouldn’t be surprised if some IRS people went to jail. Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if he went to jail — no more integrity than our lawmakers have. I don’t know why they have to call these crooks lawmakers in the first place. I guess anybody who ever got any notion about getting away with crime in this country, all they’d have to do is run for Congress and they’d have all the bases covered.”

“I have to disagree with the person who so eloquently expressed his concern about the caliber of readers who call in their opinions to Trib Talk. Besides providing an open forum for debate on the various topics of particular interest to the citizenry of Columbia, Trib Talk could be used as a cost-effective tool for Columbia Public Schools. As a secondary teacher and an avid reader of Trib Talk, it is my conclusion that with careful analysis of this article, the school system could forgo MAP testing altogether. After only a few weeks of perusing this section of the paper, it would not take a team of school administrators much time to determine where more support is needed in the curriculum. The most obvious subjects requiring immediate scrutiny are grammar, social studies and basic logic. If the appropriate changes were made, student achievement may increase and the aforementioned critics appeased.”

“The historical preservation people supporting the few quite modern houses along Providence Road adjacent to Grasslands Subdivision should extend their thinking back a little farther into more significant history when that strip of houses was a wooded border for the Rollins estate that shielded the beautiful Rollins mansion from the dust-rising traffic along old Providence Road, which was then a gravel road traveled by horses and wagons. That history could be restored by taking down the houses and replacing them with an environmentally sound strip of native vegetation, behind which would lie the new feeder road, narrow and landscaped, connecting Bingham and Burnam.”

“I just went downtown to pay my electric bill. I normally pay it online, but I wasn’t able to do that this time. I hate going downtown. I despise everything about going to downtown Columbia. The bill says on the back that the window for payment and drop box are accessible from Seventh Street, so I took Walnut to Seventh Street and turned toward Broadway. The alley that goes behind City Hall is one way at Seventh going the wrong direction. You can’t make a left turn into it. So when I get in to pay my bill, they show me exactly where that payment window is, and everything is accessible from Eighth Street. Way to go, Finance Department.”

“Wow, someone is really disgruntled over the existence of Trib Talk. I expected Robertson’s reply to be, ‘I see you are reading it.’ ”

“There have been no news stories about refinery problems or higher prices on a barrel of crude oil — no excuses. Then it dawned on me this is mid-May, which is graduation time at the universities, and Memorial Day weekend is coming soon — one last chance to rob the students and families who want to travel. Want to bet it goes back down in about three weeks?”

“The most human flaw that there is in this lifetime is to try to reason with a moron.”

“This is about the Boy Scouts not being able to discriminate against gays. What’s the difference between being able to do that and the Catholic schools firing a teacher recently because he was gay? It was OK to fire a gay teacher at a Catholic school, so why can’t the Boy Scouts set a certain standard for their people and get away with it? You know, I think we’ve got some hypocrisy here.”

“Yesterday the timing belt on my car broke, and I was stranded at the corner of Garth and Oak Street. While other people — supposedly, I guess, Christian people — were going by yelling at me that I was blocking the street, this young Muslim couple stopped. He was evidently a mechanic and thought maybe he could look at the engine, but since I was out in the middle of the street the first thing was he wanted to go ahead and see if he could push me off the street. I was afraid he would get hurt. I had called the tow truck, and by the time he started to try to push my car, the tow truck arrived. For all of the good Christian people who think all Muslim people are bad, I want to express my thanks and my appreciation to that young man and his wife. They were the only people who even offered help.”

“People in the United States are not worried about Benghazi. The only people worried about this is Congress. The average person is more concerned about economic suppression and the role Congress is playing in the starvation of our children and the out and out defunding of America itself.”

“We don’t have to worry about identity theft in the state of Missouri. The Department of Revenue takes care of that for us by just handing that stuff out.”

“I’m just watching the hearings on the IRS targeting audits on conservative organizations, and the questioner is asking who in the IRS targeted conservative organizations. These are conservative organizations by definition. They are not social welfare organizations, not 501(c4)s, but are political organizations. I believe their targeting was in accepting versus denying applications for 501(c4) status, and I believe none was denied. I think the IRS was doing its job in checking into these, although they should also look at the other side.”

“I’m calling about the individual who’s complaining about his neighbor mowing at 7 in the evening. Golly, buddy, do you think maybe that’s the only time during the day he can mow his yard? He’s probably been at work all day and doesn’t want to be mowing that late either. Get a grip.”

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.